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Monday, 2 July 2007

News about Islamic terrorism is impossible to avoid these days, even in the sanitised Malaysian media. Unfortunately, it's highly unusual for Muslims in Malaysia to ever criticise their co-religionists, no matter how outrageous their actions are. Muslim terrorists regularly murder women, children, civilians, and non-combatants alike. They execute captured prisoners after the most vicious torture. Terrorists acting in the name of Islam also blow up mosques, murder imams, and even violate oaths taken on the Quran, such as when the Taliban captured the Afghan village of Qala Mussa earlier this year, after having sworn on the Quran to engage in negotiations with the local elders. And yet, there is rarely a hint of outrage in the Muslim world. Malaysia is no exception to this pattern.

For a Malaysian example of this bizarre behaviour, let’s review the Malaysian reactions to the recent (2005) passing of Dr. Azahari Husin, the notorious Malaysian terrorist, committed jihadist, and chief bombmaker for terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah. Dr. Azahari, as you may recall, was directly implicated in the Bali bombings (both 2002 and 2005), the Australian embassy bombing in Jakarta, and the JW Mariott hotel bombing also in Jakarta. Azahari was in fact an unrepentant mass murderer, responsible for the deaths of hundreds of innocent people. But, as his family and the Malaysian media would have it, he was also supposedly a ‘genuinely warm and caring kind of guy’.

Here is the kind of spin his family put on their ‘fondly remembered’ Doctor Azahari, as was published verbatim in a Malaysian newspaper at the time:

…in his family, he was a respected big brother whose skills in Maths and zest for sports were a source of inspiration to his nine siblings. Azahari Husin’s sister, Suraya, 45, recalled that her brother loved cowboy movies and thought girls were "soppy".

He loved the outdoors and once hitchhiked on a lorry from the premier Malay College (in) Kuala Kangsar, where he studied, to his home in Jasin as a teenager. When he studied in Australia, he took motorcycle excursions across the desert. He loved orchids and sports cars.

The remainder of this media puff piece continues on in the same insufferable vein. And while the family finds plenty of wonderful memories to share with the all-too-willing Malaysian media, there is nary a trace of condemnation of the late doctor's multi-year murder spree.

Azahari's family eventually had this to say about the terrorist Dr. Azahari:

“… our family and friends never interfered with what my brother did. That’s the integrity of our family,” said (a younger sister of Dr Azahari Husin.)

“People can say what they want, but I know my brother,” she said when pressed for comments by newsmen at her house in Jalan Chin Chin here yesterday.

The woman, who lives a few kilometres from her parent’s house, said her father Husin Yaakob, 78, had left home for the time being, to live with one of her siblings, in anticipation of media interest in Dr Azahari’s family.

Azahari also received a hero’s send-off at his funeral in his hometown of Jasin in Malacca state. The ceremony attracted some 600 well wishers, who repeatedly screamed ‘Allahu akbar’ as his coffin was lowered into the ground. Many present at the funeral also voiced scepticism of Azahari’s role as a top terrorist. “Azahari will always have friends here. We shouldn't be asked to believe what is written about him in the newspapers,” said one man who identified himself to reporters only as Yusri.

These are very curious reactions all around, at the very least. Given the multiple opportunities to condemn terrorism, and to pronounce how un-Islamic all this terrorism supposedly is, Azahari’s family, friends and neighbours all refused to so state. Rather the opposite, actually—in particular, Azahari’s sister said for the record that family and friends “…never interfered with what my brother did”. This is a disturbingly noncommittal thing to say about a man intimately involved in carrying out mass murder, and for conspiring to commit even more mass murder. Indeed, it could even be construed as approval.

Compare the (at best) tepid response of the Azahari family to the response of another family that had one of its own become a mass murderer—the family of Cho Seung Hui. Cho, as many no doubt remember, was a Korean American who murdered 32 people just a few months ago at a university in Virginia before taking his own life. In the aftermath of this devastating tragedy, the family issued a powerful and eloquent statement to the world and to the relatives of the victims. This statement reads, in part:

On behalf of our family, we are so deeply sorry for the devastation my brother has caused. No words can express our sadness that 32 innocent people lost their lives this week in such a terrible, senseless tragedy. We are heartbroken.

…

We pray for their families and loved ones who are experiencing so much excruciating grief. And we pray for those who were injured and for those whose lives are changed forever because of what they witnessed and experienced.

Despite their shock, grief and unimaginable horror, the Cho family managed to compose and release this brief, but articulate public statement. In no uncertain terms, it makes it clear how the Cho family felt about the actions of their loved one, a loved one who, like Azahari Husin, mercilessly slaughtered so many. And still, this one simple statement is light years ahead of anything ever spoken by any of the family or friends of Dr. Azahari.

Why, indeed, did the Azahari family choose to not say anything even remotely similar to this? And for another example, why didn’t any of the families of the 9-11 hijackers issue statements like the Cho family? Why do all of these Muslim families to this day steadfastly refuse to denounce the unspeakable crimes of their loved ones?

It’s not hard to understand why. While a lot of Muslims may talk of peaceful co-existence, they tacitly approve of Islamic terrorists killing non-Muslims. More often than Muslims like to admit, these terrorists, either living or dead, are lionized as heroes in the Islamic world.

Many Muslims know that these attitudes will not play well in the West. Thus, the official policy of Muslim countries like Malaysia is to condemn Islamic terrorism. When need be (often right after a spectacular Muslim terrorist attack), Muslim countries and organisations are quick to release generalised, pro-forma, and mealy-mouthed condemnations of ‘all kinds of terrorism’. Strangely enough, however, they can never get around to disavowing Hamas, Hizbullah, Al Qaeda, etc. specifically and by name. Yet all the while, the mass media and much of the general public in Muslim nations, as seen in the Malaysian media coverage of Azahari’s death, are rather sympathetic to these cold-blooded killers.

Many Westerners believe that all this pro-terrorist talk will go away once economic prosperity comes to the Islamic world. Perhaps. However, it’s important to point out that many, if not most middle and upper class Muslims, share these pro-terrorist attitudes. So let’s just face the fact that, if you are a kafir (and most people on the planet are), a whole lot of Muslims want you dead or converted to Islam.....unless you're Jewish, in which case, only dead will do.

But don’t just take my word for it. You can look it up.....in the Muslim media.